Never allow your wanton desires to interfere with the basic needs and interests of others and live simply so others may simply live

Thursday, January 26, 2012

From the New York Times

In China, Human Costs Are Built Into an iPad

The explosion ripped through Building A5 on a Friday evening last May,
an eruption of fire and noise that twisted metal pipes as if they were
discarded straws.

Color China Photo, via Associated Press

An explosion last May at a Foxconn factory in
Chengdu, China, killed four people and injured 18. It built iPads.

SAFETY PRECAUTIONS After a rash of
apparent suicide attempts, a dormitory for Foxconn workers in Shenzhen,
China, had safety netting installed last May. Foxconn said it acted
quickly and comprehensively to address employee suicides.

When workers in the cafeteria ran outside, they saw black smoke pouring
from shattered windows. It came from the area where employees polished
thousands of iPad cases a day.

Two people were killed immediately, and over a dozen others hurt. As the
injured were rushed into ambulances, one in particular stood out. His
features had been smeared by the blast, scrubbed by heat and violence
until a mat of red and black had replaced his mouth and nose.

“Are you Lai Xiaodong’s father?” a caller asked when the phone rang at
Mr. Lai’s childhood home. Six months earlier, the 22-year-old had moved
to Chengdu, in southwest China, to become one of the millions of human
cogs powering the largest, fastest and most sophisticated manufacturing
system on earth. That system has made it possible for Apple and hundreds of other companies to build devices almost as quickly as they can be dreamed up.

“He’s in trouble,” the caller told Mr. Lai’s father. “Get to the hospital as soon as possible.”

In the last decade, Apple has become one of the mightiest, richest and
most successful companies in the world, in part by mastering global
manufacturing. Apple and its high-technology peers — as well as dozens
of other American industries — have achieved a pace of innovation nearly
unmatched in modern history.

However, the workers assembling iPhones, iPads and other devices often
labor in harsh conditions, according to employees inside those plants,
worker advocates and documents published by companies themselves.
Problems are as varied as onerous work environments and serious —
sometimes deadly — safety problems.

Employees work excessive overtime, in some cases seven days a week, and
live in crowded dorms. Some say they stand so long that their legs swell
until they can hardly walk. Under-age workers have helped build Apple’s
products, and the company’s suppliers have improperly disposed of
hazardous waste and falsified records, according to company reports and
advocacy groups that, within China, are often considered reliable,
independent monitors.

More troubling, the groups say, is some suppliers’ disregard for
workers’ health. Two years ago, 137 workers at an Apple supplier in
eastern China were injured after they were ordered to use a poisonous
chemical to clean iPhone
screens. Within seven months last year, two explosions at iPad
factories, including in Chengdu, killed four people and injured 77.
Before those blasts, Apple had been alerted to hazardous conditions
inside the Chengdu plant, according to a Chinese group that published that warning.

“If Apple was warned, and didn’t act, that’s reprehensible,” said
Nicholas Ashford, a former chairman of the National Advisory Committee
on Occupational Safety and Health, a group that advises the United
States Labor Department. “But what’s morally repugnant in one country is
accepted business practices in another, and companies take advantage of
that.”

Apple is not the only electronics company doing business within a
troubling supply system. Bleak working conditions have been documented
at factories manufacturing products for Dell, Hewlett-Packard, I.B.M.,
Lenovo, Motorola, Nokia, Sony, Toshiba and others.

Current and former Apple executives, moreover, say the company has made
significant strides in improving factories in recent years. Apple has a supplier code of conduct
that details standards on labor issues, safety protections and other
topics. The company has mounted a vigorous auditing campaign, and when
abuses are discovered, Apple says, corrections are demanded.

But significant problems remain. More than half of the suppliers audited
by Apple have violated at least one aspect of the code of conduct every
year since 2007, according to Apple’s reports, and in some instances
have violated the law. While many violations involve working conditions,
rather than safety hazards, troubling patterns persist.

“Apple never cared about anything other than increasing product quality
and decreasing production cost,” said Li Mingqi, who until April worked
in management at Foxconn Technology,
one of Apple’s most important manufacturing partners. Mr. Li, who is
suing Foxconn over his dismissal, helped manage the Chengdu factory
where the explosion occurred.

“Workers’ welfare has nothing to do with their interests,” he said.

Some former Apple executives say there is an unresolved tension within
the company: executives want to improve conditions within factories, but
that dedication falters when it conflicts with crucial supplier
relationships or the fast delivery of new products. Tuesday, Apple reported
one of the most lucrative quarters of any corporation in history, with
$13.06 billion in profits on $46.3 billion in sales. Its sales would
have been even higher, executives said, if overseas factories had been
able to produce more.

Executives at other corporations report similar internal pressures. This
system may not be pretty, they argue, but a radical overhaul would slow
innovation. Customers want amazing new electronics delivered every
year.

“We’ve known about labor abuses in some factories for four years, and
they’re still going on,” said one former Apple executive who, like
others, spoke on the condition of anonymity because of confidentiality
agreements. “Why? Because the system works for us. Suppliers would
change everything tomorrow if Apple told them they didn’t have another
choice.”

“If half of iPhones were malfunctioning, do you think Apple would let it go on for four years?” the executive asked.

1 comment:

I had been thinking about all this when poor Steve Jobs died. It was wonderful how inventive and smart he was, but the way the company is run, and how the poor workers in China are so horribly exploited by Apple and so many corporations, is a story that had to be told. It seems the global fate of workers is tied in with the action or inaction of the Chinese labor force.

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